History of Cape Breton heard in Voices of Heritage project

SYDNEY — Heritage Connection Cape Breton recently added nine new subjects to Voices of Heritage, a series of interviews with some of the most active people in the preservation of Cape Breton history and culture.

“Some of the interviews run up to two hours and that information is being saved,” said Joan MacInnes, a member of the connection. “Some of it is available through the Beaton Institute for people doing research on certain things. If they want to hear about what other people have done they can listen and see the whole interview.”

Among those interviewed so far are the late Bob Morgan who was part of the founding group of the Old Sydney Society.

Morgan talks in his interview about noticing an old church on the Esplanade while walking to his job at the former St. FX Junior College in Sydney.

“I worked it out and discovered this had been the oldest Catholic church on the island. I went to the parish at Sacred Heart to the glebe and asked Monseigneur Gallivan for the key to go in.”

Morgan was joined by Don Arseneau, also an interview subject, on that first tour of that church and together they decided the building, now known as St. Patrick’s Museum, had to be saved from demolition. From there, they joined others in the community who felt the need to develop and organize the Old Sydney Society.

“There was no other active historical society on the island. All we knew was there was all these museums on the mainland supported by Halifax and there was nothing here.”

Martin Boston, known for his work at the Orangedale Railway Museum, is another subject of the interview series. In his segment, Boston discusses the importance of preserving railway history.

“If we don’t do something to preserve this and get it down for future generations the ones left who still have some of this information and these stories and things are going to be gone,” Boston said about railway history. “We are going to have no bank of history to work from.”

Boston also gives demonstrations of old equipment, speaks about the origins of the station and discusses the importance of Heritage Connection Cape Breton.

“You met people from small struggling museums. We were learning as we went and each step was a new step and in an altogether new direction. By working with these other people in the same boat as we were, we made a better case for ourselves than if we were all trying to do it on our own.”

The former town of Dominion is seen through its former postmaster’s eyes, thanks to Len Stephenson’s contribution to the series.

“I was involved with local community history, that was my main engine because we had a lot of local community history,” said Stephenson, who talked about coal mining, local streets and town founders in his segment. “I would interview all the citizens and get their stories and then write about them.”

The first 12 interviews for Voices of Heritage were started in 2010 as part of Phase 1 of the project that is supported by the provincial government. Phase 2 and its new interviews were discussed in detail earlier this month at a meeting of the umbrella group for heritage and culture organizations in Cape Breton.